What is a Record?

A record is defined as a block of information that refers to a single document for a single recipient. A document can be anything, such as an invoice, a letter, a postcard, a report, a contract. When defining records in the Data Sample (called Source Records), the concept of a single documents and recipients is important. For instance, a Record should not contain multiple invoices for a single client, nor should it contain multiple client addresses for postcards.

While the record is a more general term, there are two more specific places where record is used:

The Source Record is the piece of information as it is found in Sample Data. Source Records are defined by Boundaries in the Settings Pane.

The Extracted Record, on the other hand, is a combination of data extracted from the Source Record using the Extractor and data coming from other sources. Each Extracted Record is used in the Designer module to generate a single document for a single recipient, and is part of the Record Set, the complete information being generated by a data mapping configuration and later merged with a template created in Designer.